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10/10/13

Moondoggies @The Pike Room

Moondoggies

w/Rose Windows, and Old Empire

Saturday, October 12th, at the Pike Room

$10, 8pm

When
Kevin Murphy sent his new album, Adiós I’m A
Ghost to me, I assumed the title was just a
clever play on words filling the void until he
found just the right turn of phrase to sum up The
Moondoggies’ third full-length release on Hardly
Art. It turned out, he already
had.

Adiós I’m a Ghost, as a
title and explanation of a theme, combines levity
with ideas that are no laughing matter. “Adiós
I'm a Ghost was, like our [band] name, a
combination of a joke and serious ideas. I heard
the phrase on a Phil Hendrie podcast...and it grew
into something else for me; being able to have
life after death. Because we live and die million
times in the big span of being around. We
transition. And the Moondoggies lived and died and
lived again, but not so absolutely...we just
shifted away, shed our old skin and now we're...”
Murphy drifts off. “ I hope” he says, “this album
relays our want to have no form.”

To
shift shapes, much less become shapeless, the
Moondoggies had to change: their line-up, the way
they communicated, recorded, and wrote. They would
have to push beyond the public pigeonhole of being
a bearded band from Seattle singing in harmony to
give the breadth of their influences a space in
the spotlight. For Adiós I’m a Ghost they
drew from a diverse list of musical influences
from Pink Floyd to Blonde Redhead, Mississippi
John Hurt to Nirvana.

Though they are
oft compared to Laurel Canyon crooners or Southern
swamp boogiers, Adiós I’m a Ghost is a
quintessentially Northwest record. It speaks, with
more than words, of tumultuous transformation --
changing pace as often as the weather on a Seattle
spring day. Musically and lyrically, it balances
light and dark, marrying the boisterous blues of
their debut album Don’t Be a Stranger,
the symphonic sadness of Tidelands, and a
temperamental timbre previously unheard from the
band. Still present are their signature honeyed
harmonies, Bobby Terreberry’s bubbling bass lines,
Carl Dahlen’s chugging drums, Caleb Quick’s
roiling Rhodes, and lead vocalist and guitarist
Murphy’s heady hooks. But there’s something
undeniably different about this record, least of
which is the addition of multi-instrumentalist Jon
Pontrello to the band.

With new, old
blood and a renewed passion for playing together,
the Moondoggies channeled the band’s beginnings:
dingy dive bars and DIY house shows, those damp
teenage back porch jams, the hours on end spent
improvising in their practice space. In the
process of recording Adiós…, songs laid
to rest were reborn (“Don’t Ask Why” was recorded
for a never released album). Others were
tirelessly edited until they were just right (“A
Lot to Give” has been written and rewritten
countless times over the course of years). Others
exploded from the electric energy of the studio.
All told, the band recorded 21 songs with
producer Ryan Hadlock at Bear Creek
Studios.

The 12 songs the band
settled on highlight their dichotomies: dirty
hooks and sweet harmonies, electric edge and
plaintive pleas, chaotic collapse and restorative
rhythm, nostalgia and newness. Though there is
plenty that evokes the band that came before.
Those of you looking for something familiar will
be wowed by the Crazy Horse deja vu of “Don’t Ask
Why,” and several of the new songs have already
become live standards at Moondoggies shows. But as
a listener, the most exciting parts of the album
are the band’s explorations of this undefined
territory they sought to inhabit. The surf strut
that begins “Midnight Owl” is unlike anything
heard before on a Moondoggies record, the upbeat
tempo masking a brutal retelling of love at any
cost.

As a creative process and a finished
product, Adiós I’m a Ghost is the
Moondoggies at their best yet; exemplary of their
desire to move beyond a self-made mold and embrace
a boundary-less
existence.